Birthdays
by ultrafreakyfangirl
Summary: One for every year. And for every year that passes, Natalie thinks a little more.


**_Author's Note: Ha. I guess you guys can see by now that I really have no life. I started this with the intention of writing another compilation fic – like _****_Natalie _****_– with instances rather than a single plotline, but I wanted a holiday fic. But Christmas is too far away, I could have done Halloween or Thanksgiving, but no. So, I went with birthdays. Hope you guys like it! _**

…

Birthdays with Jason usually meant flights to tropical beach destinations, all the sangria she could drink (even if that led to a perfectly timed hangover the next morning) and sex on sheets with an_ unbelievable_ thread count.

Once, it fell during his campaign, so he jetted her across the ocean to the Bahamas for the weekend, but that time, even as she was _properly _drunk, the lavish thread count of the sheets couldn't save their sex. Nothing could, but of course, she didn't find out _why_ until weeks later.

Birthdays with Jason hadn't always been so opulent. When they'd first meant, it was only September, and she was just freshly nineteen years old. In _Econ for Dummies_ – it was really Economics 101, but that had been their joke on that first day, when the professor nudged his glasses up further on his nose, cleared his throat and said, "_what__** is **__economics?"_

…

He'd sat down beside her, and he wasn't tentative about it, he didn't ask, he just put his backpack down and took out his laptop like he had _every right_ to be sitting so close to her when there was at least five seats on either side of her still empty. She had rolled her eyes. _"Sure, you can sit here. No problem. Not that I needed the elbow room at all."_

He turned to look at her. He smiled. He had dimples, cute little crevices in his cheeks that reflected the florescent lighting of the lecture hall. They were blinding. Distracting. And he had a gleam in his eyes too, hazel, a little lighter than hers, and she very nearly called them _pretty; _his expression was that typical of some pedigree prep schoolboy, who probably wore uniforms with crisp, pressed, collard shirts and cardigans with the school crest emblemed on the right breast.

Mommy and Daddy probably bought his way in here, just like they'd been buying him things his entire life. She didn't need to get mixed up in his shit, she was a scholarship girl, only at Brown because Providence was the furthest Ivy from her parents. One look at him and she could see that he was a Momma's boy. Another thing she absolutely did not need.

_"__Don't fuck with me. You don't need any elbow room on this side."_ He gestured to her right hand, gripping a pen. _"You're right-handed."_

_Hm._ A preppy boy who swore. _Unexpected._ _Sexy. _She met his eyes and his smile got wider. _"I'm Jason. And you are?"_

She didn't know what to take him for. Was he a gentleman? Was he a dick? Was he a dick with a streak of gentlemanliness, or was he a gentleman with a streak of dick-tendencies?

Whichever way he worked, she had enough sense to see that he was unpredictable, would keep her on her toes, and quite possibly, her knees. Okay, she took that last one back instantly, hoping that he didn't catch her blush. There was no denying he was hot, but that didn't mean she was going to take him back to her dorm and blow him, _did it?_

…

If inquiring minds want to know, it did, _months later_, and luckily, she saw his gentlemanly side first, because he treated her to another myriad of sensations her last, and only boyfriend, had never.

The first birthday she spent with him was three months into them dating. He took her to their favorite coffee shop on campus after class and bought her a book of poems that she pretended to like but secretly laughed at with her girlfriends later. It was sweet. He was well read, travelled, and every time he kissed her, she was afraid she was going to melt.

Her last birthday with him went uncelebrated. They barely talked that day. He'd went into work early, and so did she, because she couldn't stand another minute in that house any longer, alone. A card showed up on her desk at her office some hours later, with Happy Birthday in sprawling, sparkly, script, but inside, there was just three, simple, words, the pen ink smudged, a small coffee stain in the corner (he was always spilling things). _Happy Birthday, Nati._

The same day that card came, Joe came into her office with sex proposition, and she'd accepted, and it was only when he had her bent over the desk, did he see the card, which was right by her head. He'd groaned it into her ear, hot, wet, and without proper sentiment. _"Huh. Happy Birthday, Fig."_ Then he made it ten times worse, as he tends to with things_. "I'll let you come first, in spirit of your day and all that." _

She was never comfortable with thinking those birthdays that started to fall when she was with Joe, as Jason's birthdays, too. Not after that.

Birthdays with Joe had always been a little simpler. The next one was when he was with Linda, but still, he called her that night, and she would have been naive to assume that Linda wasn't next to him, probably asleep, breathing daintily through her nose.

_"__Happy Birthday, Nat," _he said, then quieter,_ "sorry I can't – or more like it, __**probably shouldn't**__ fuck you this year. I mean, not that I wouldn't want to, because you are sex on those toothpicks you call legs – " _

_"__Shut up, Joe. And thanks." _

He sounded sad, maybe even a little remorseful, god knows why. _"Did Jason – " _

She sucked in a breath. Part of her was still mourning their relationship, and a part of her probably always would. _"No."_

_"__That sucks." _

_"__Yeah." _

_…_

A year after that, they were officially _boyfriend and girlfriend_, like a freshman couple at the roller rink. For her, it was almost like being young again, she smiled more, and so did he. More than that, she wasn't _afraid _to smile more, to really feel, simply, irrevocably _happy._

_"__Happy birthday, babe,"_ he said to her, handing her a small, wrapped box and a bigger one, with a cheesy smile.

_Babe._ As new as that was, and as much as it sometimes made her feel like a twenty-something Lululemon clad, blonde with the ass of a runway model and boobs that weren't fake, but soft and perky, she still felt tingly when he said it.

_"__I got you a little something. Open the bigger one first."_

They were fuzzy handcuffs from a fucking sex shop. He laughed. _"Okay now that's for part 3 of your present, which you will receive when we get home." _

_"__Great," she said with mirth. "Just great. I can't wait for you to tie me up like a fucking prisoner." _

_"__Who said you were going to be the one tied up?" _

He raised his eyebrows, licked his lips, and she had no words. _No words whatsoever._ The second box was a beautiful _Cartier_ watch that must have cost him a fortune, but he didn't say as such and she wouldn't press. It was stunning, and she loved him, not for that, but for so many other things, and that was all that mattered.

…

_"__Hey,"_ Joe whispered into her ear. Her eyes fluttered open slowly, her body lethargic, her mind even more so. He smacked her ass lightly through her sweatpants. _"Wake up, sweet cheeks. It's your birthday." _

_"__No,"_ she grumbled, and opened her eyes, finally ready to look at him, at the mess that became of their bedroom last night.

Or three days ago. Whenever it was that she had done the laundry and was too exhausted after the oddly rigorous task itself to bother putting it away. She saw that he had both pants and a shirt on, his glasses slightly askew. So he'd been awake already.

_"__I'm not getting out of this bed, and you can't make me."_

_"__You sound like Vanessa,"_ he chuckled, _"who by the way has a surprise for you downstairs." _

_"__I hate surprises you ass,"_ she mumbled back, and he hit her leg overtop of the covers.

_"__You'll love this one, I promise. Now, come on." _

He'd convinced her to come downstairs by practically forcing her out of the bed as he tickled her repeatedly until she threw the covers back and ran out of the room, down the stairs, and almost smack right into Vanessa.

_"__Was Joe tickling you again? I heard you laughing and yelling at him to stop. Since I'm down here_,_ you wouldn't be doing anything__** inappropriate**__ up there, right?" _

Natalie almost laughed at her no-nonsense tone. She reached out and rubbed her arm. She was still getting used to kids and affection and boundaries, especially with a girl like Vanessa.

_"__He was just tickling me. Nothing more, we promise." _

Vanessa grinned at her and offered her the plate of pancakes she'd been holding, that somehow, Natalie had completely bypassed.

_"__Good. Happy Birthday, Natalie. I made you pancakes. Well, I helped make the batter, and Joe did the rest, but it was my idea!" _

She sounded so proud of herself, of her sweet, selfless mind, that thought about getting up early to surprise her with pancakes. She had no idea that kids could be _this _adorable. She felt something rise up in her chest, and it took her a minute, but she realized that she's felt it before. Only two other times in her life, but she_ has_ felt it.

But she had enough sense to know that it was too early on to say anything. So, she just hugged Vanessa tightly to her instead, and was calmed by the way the little girl just relaxed into it, into her, like that.

_"__Joe was right. This__** was**__ a great surprise. I love it. Thank you." _

Vanessa beamed up at her. _"You're welcome." _

…

Two little bodies with four little knees, and four little fists came flying at her much too early that morning. She sighed. She didn't have the heart to push them off, even as one knee, she was sure it was Oliver's, he had bonier knees than Vanessa did, was aimed straight for her groin.

"Happy Birthday Mommy!"

"Happy Birthday, Mom!"

Then there was a pair of lips on hers, indulgent, soft.

"Happy Birthday, Nat."

She opened her eyes. She looked up to met Joe's smiling face and ran her hand across the back of his head, down the nape of his neck.

"Thank you."

She reached over next to hug Vanessa as best as she was able, who was on Joe's left, and then five-year-old Oliver, who was on Joe's right.

"And thank _you,_ my little bugs. What a sweet wake up call that was."

And she meant it. Sure, she was probably going to end up with the most innocent bruises in the weirdest places, and okay, they sort of scared _the shit_ out of her, and yeah, it was five-thirty in the morning, but the whole thing was _just so sweet._

Joe was looking at the clock on their nightstand, and she watched too, as the glowing red numbers changed from 5:33 to 5:34.

"Happy Birthday, _Natalie Claire_. To the very second," he whispered to her, leaning over to kiss her lips again.

There was something so resolutely intimate about that. How he watched the clock and counted up from one to sixty, to the exact minute that she was born, only to whisper _happy birthday, Natalie Claire _into her ear. _To the very second._

He'd never used her middle name before, ever, and now that she thought about it, she couldn't remember if and when she would have told him. She obviously did, at some point, but because she couldn't remember, it was probably when she was too drunk to censor herself.

_Ah, that's right._ When she was barefoot on the floor of her office, sunken into the wall with dried tears on her cheeks and a bottle of expensive dessert wine clutched close to her chest. She remembered that day well. _Too well,_ probably.

…

It was the day she'd found out via news coverage that the body of one of their detainee's – _Karla Cordova_ – had been found in some area just off the desert path. The body was already well on its way into decaying, so identifying her took awhile, but they managed to do it. And she wished that they hadn't. She didn't want to know. It made the whole thing _so much worse_. A name. That was it. And yet, for a minute, her whole world felt like it was going to implode.

_"__Hey Nat…I heard…are you okay?" _

Joe sat down on the floor next to her and took her hand. _"Probably not. That was a stupid question. Sorry."_

She squeezed his hand and kissed his temple. _"No. No, it's not. Don't apologize. You care, Joe. You care so much. About me, about these women, about…about everyone. Where's Vanessa? Oh god, Joe, you didn't bring her here did you?"_

_"__Of course not, Natalie, she's with the sitter – what would make you – "_

He stopped, eyed the half-drunk bottle in her hands. _"Are you drunk?" _

She rolled her eyes. "_Are you drunk?" _Mocking him. A defense mechanism. _"Of course I am. Nobody else is here, just me, by myself, drinking this entire bottle of wine by the fucking gulp. So yeah, Joe, I might just be a little tipsy. What's it to you?"_

He didn't say anything. Smart. Just took the bottle out of her grasp and put in on top of her desk, then he gathered her in his arms and carded his fingers through her hair.

"_You said it yourself. I __**care**__, Natalie. I care about you. And it's so much more than that. __**I love you;**__ you know that." _

_"__I do,"_ she whispered, hiding her face in his chest._ "And I love you, too. And I'm so glad you're here, because, Joe, I'm really sad. I didn't know this woman, but I'm __**fucking **__**sad.**__ And I'm angry that the system and this world are both such __**god damn train wrecks **__and that innocent people are all just in the middle of it." _

_"__I know,"_ Joe hummed into her ear. _"I know."_

_"__You know something? I was innocent once. Not privy to all of this fucking shit because of my fucking job. I actually grew up pretty sheltered. On a small little town – " _

She glared at him when he chuckled. _"- Beaufort. It's in North Carolina, you dick. I didn't grow up in like Alabama, okay? I know what you're thinking."_

_"__I wasn't,"_ Joe told her, rubbing his thumb along her knuckles. _"I wasn't thinking anything. Except maybe that's why you hate country music." _

_"__My tolerance for country music has nothing to do with how or where I grew up. Again, I didn't grow up in the middle of fucking Alabama." _

_"__Okay, carry on." _

_"__So, anyway, my parents were great. They took care of me the best they could. My dad hit the booze a little heavy sometimes, and my mom stayed quiet about it, there was nothing to be concerned about. He never got mean, or sulked, or physical like you would think. Luckily. What wasn't so lucky is how he died at 64 from cirrhosis." _

She sniffed and she felt Joe put his arm around her._ "You know that I know basically none of your history, right? Except, well, you being married once before and that he was gay, but that's – I don't know how you two met, either." _

_"__Story for another time, Joseph," _Natalie said, leaning her head on his shoulder.

"_Anyways, I was really close to him, and I didn't take it well, as expected, I guess, as it should have been. I was twenty-nine. I had been married to Jason for five years then, and my dad had been expecting grandchildren. And we had been working on it, but…anyways. _

_"__The point of this story was that when I was younger, five, six, seven, up to about eleven years old when I stopped wanting to go, my dad used to take me on these road trips – and really, they were just down to the store, or to the auto parts place, like I said, Beaufort was a small town. We would play I-Spy and we'd point out small little things like a mailbox falling off its stand, or a cocker spaniel walking three feet in front of its owner, unleashed, and he would say to me – " _

Here, she paused to compose herself again. She hadn't thought of her past like this, her childhood, her parents, Beaufort, those mailboxes, that cocker spaniel, in a very, very, long time. Probably too long, and it was making her feel so many things at once. Yearning for her dad, for the world to be like it was back then, to have her own innocence back, to see the world, untainted.

_"__Natalie Claire, the world of Beaufort is beautiful, untouched, **loved.** But the world outside of it, in those big cities with those big corporations and what have you, they trap you in, but it's ugly. Really ugly. And you'll see it one day, I'm sure. But promise me you'll do whatever you can to stop yourself from becoming one of them. _

_"__And look what I did, huh? I became exactly what he warned me about. What he told me not to. Jesus Christ, he's probably rolling in his grave." _

Joe kissed her head. _"I'll bet he's proud of you. You're trying your best here, Nat. And you became one of those sell outs like the rest of us when you became the Senator's wife, babe. Don't flatter yourself." _

She leaned over to kiss him on the mouth, gentle, short. _"Ex-wife."_

_"__Your middle name is Claire? Wow. I did__** not **__know that." _

_"__And you wouldn't. It's not something I announce to the presses." _

He chuckled, kissed her back. _"Yeah, but I'm glad I do now. It makes me realize that you were once soft, powderpuff._ **_Claire._** Sounds like it would be the name of one of those fairies from those books Vanessa reads. _Claire, the Pink Fairy._"

_"__And I'm what, now? A cold, heartless, bitch?" _

_"__Not at all. Well, sometimes."_ He laughed when she hit him.

"_It suits you, Natalie. Really. Now that I know you. The __**real Natalie**__. __**Natalie Claire**__. You're sweet, feisty, brazen sometimes, you have the cutest smile, and_ _you're the best mother to our little girl. I love the woman that you are, and I know that your dad would, too._"

She looked up at him with even more tears in her eyes, ones he tried to stop from falling with his thumb. _"You really mean that?" _

_"__With all my heart. Now, let's get off this floor and get you home. Come on." _

…

"Hey Joe?" she said to him later, when both of the kids were occupied by the TV and the two of them were sitting at the kitchen island, finishing the remnants of the coffee pot from earlier.

"Yeah, babe?"

She leaned into his side and he rubbed her back. "This is the best birthday ever."

…

**_Author's Note: Yeah okay, so I don't really know where the whole Natalie Figueroa backstory even came from. I just really liked the idea of her growing up in some small town sheltered way and basically abandoning it, but when you see her vulnerable, quiet side, it shows up every once and awhile. I'm still stuck on whether the backstory suits her or not, but it also came from the fact that she viewed herself as not as attractive as her best friend growing up and all of those small, secret vulnerabilities. I hope it fit into the plot. I don't know. I'm not totally happy with it, but oh well. Let me know what you guys think! _**


End file.
